“You stay here, Doto,” he said, as he gently released his arm from the monkey’s hold. “Bomba will soon see you again.”
Then, as the affectionate animal seemed a little crestfallen, the boy added:
“But you can keep watch, and if you see the men with black hearts coming after Bomba, you must come and tell him. You can go faster through the trees than they can through the jungle.”
Doto seemed to understand, and with a last pat of his paw shinned up the nearest tree. Bomba knew that he had left behind him a vigilant and faithful sentinel.
A glance at the sun told the boy that it was already afternoon, and that he must hasten if he were to reach the cabin of Pipina before the shadows of night closed about him.
So he started off at a rapid pace, employing all his woodsmanship to avoid obstacles and steer as straight a course as possible. For a part of the way there were woodland trails, and then he made good time. When he could, which was often, he jumped over the thickets instead of hacking his way through them, leaping into the air as lightly as a deer and landing softly on the other side.
Before long he was on familiar ground, and knew that he was reaching the cabin where he and Casson had lived for so many years. It had been burned during the last foray of the headhunters, and was now uninhabitable. But all that Bomba had ever known of home was bound up in it.
So a certain melancholy pleasure warmed his heart as he came out into the clearing and looked at the part of the smoke-blackened wall that remained standing. Without being conscious of it, tears stood in his eyes, and he vowed that he would rebuild when the headhunters should have removed their dreaded presence from the jungle.
But he had no time now to indulge in reflections. A hasty search of the river bank revealed his canoe in the tree-hung inlet where he had hidden it.
He untied it, sent it with a push into the middle of the stream, and began paddling down the river.